


One Good Life

by Runeless



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Fuck you archdemon, Gen, Good, Heroism, happy endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 13:17:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1689740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runeless/pseuds/Runeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The good one life can do is immense, and never able to be measured except in its effect on those around it. </p><p>(In the aftermath of heroism, perhaps everyone becomes a little greater.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Good Life

ONE MAN'S LIFE

There was a moment in the last battle that Morrigan will never tell anyone about.

  
She had not loved the Warden, as most had, but she had... respected him. Even when he made foolish ( _compassionate_ ) decisions, he always brought her around to seeing the pragmatism inherent in them; that by sparing one or a hundred, he would have one or a hundred at his back at a later time. Mother had always said it was in the nature of weaklings to cling to the strong; but watching Redcliffe's soldiers fight and die now, stabbing and screaming and warring as the darkspawn swarmed them, it was hard to call them weak. It was harder still to give credence to the words of an old ( _cruel_ ) woman in the woods, so far away now, who seemed so much... less than all this. Here in this city was where people moved, acted, lived... These cities were where life happened. The woods were so... dead, in comparison.

  
(Stone, so much stone in these cities. No trees. Unpleasant and uncomfortable at first, but now... she liked it. She liked standing on stone better than on forest dirt. Dirt was soft and helpless, but stone was solid and firm and unyielding, unbreakable. Like him. Like she wanted to be. When had she started thinking like this?)

  
It was funny that, despite never loving him, she had made love _to_ him- and he was pretty good at it, Leliana's whispered intakes of breath in the night had not lied to sharp-eared witches who should not have eavesdropped but did- and now it was his bastard she carried in her belly, to absorb the soul of this broken god once they'd killed it. 

_If_ they killed it. Even broken gods are still gods and it belched soul-crushing fire as it fought. The damn dog was nipping at its heels while Sten smashed steel hard to the foe's undamaged wing and Leliana peppered it with arrows, acrobatically avoiding assaults from advancing hurlocks who soon encountered a wave of dwarven defenders swinging axes, legions of the living dead to oppose the corrupted living. Morrigan did not see him, did not see her only friend in all the world, whom she had lain with to save his life and been glad to do so; other plans, other goals too but saving his life was... and she never quite admitted it to herself... more important that night, when she had accepted him into her arms.

  
( _Let me save you_ , she had said, and almost cried. And, because he knew that she hated to cry and hated worse to be seen doing it, he had looked away from her in that moment to give her some dignity... and with gratitude and respect burning in her heart for the respect he gave her, she had reached out across that unfathomable distance that separates two people to lay hand to his hand. More touching. Still rude and uncomfortable. But the surprise on his face was genuine and he let her lead him to her bed.)

Terror for him was a low-level constant but she cast her spells, called up all the otherworldly force at her command, _let him be safe_...

  
And when her blast of lightning shook the beast's heart and made it spasm, she saw a figure leap from the beast's tail into the air over its head.

  
There was a single break in the darkness to show a beam of shining moonlight and it broke on him, it broke on _him_ shining in the moonlight, not white shine or black shine but grey. Grey like stone. Grey like firmness and resilience and strength ( _justice and kindness and love_ ). Grey like the griffin that, in another time, he might have rode, weapon in hand to crush evil.

  
In that second- and just in that second, as he fell towards the beast's head and the archdemon's death was upon it, and he was glorious, Morrigan suddenly _believed_.

  
(He had been right all along. Good was not of light or darkness but stone- the stone you build a life on. A foundation for all things.)

  
The moment passed as he collided and the lord of the Blight exploded into radiance, and its soul took up new residence in her gut, and Morrigan was able to justify it to herself later. Adrenaline rush. Side effect of too many blows to the head. Weirdness from the ritual. She retreated into her contempt for all things and said to herself she would disregard all the lessons he had so patiently taught by example.

  
(But she never forgot that moment.)

 

-

  
 _He's like Maric_ , Loghain thought with terrible despair, as he fought at the gates, in memory of his best friend and his new commander both.

  
(And in later years, because he lived, Loghain will ensure the Warden's tale is spread. He had done wrong by this one like Maric, and he would not do so again. Everyone will hear, because Loghain lived, of the man who spared his life so that he might be sacrificed to stop the Archdemon... and then, when the time came, spared his life once more, and told him only, " Because you must live." He had failed another great hero once. He will not fail this one, who has saved his life twice.)

  
And live he did.

  
-

  
Wynne doubted him once, when she feared his romance with Leliana would undo him; but only the once.

  
(He calls her stone, once, and she accepts it with flattered grace, as he accepted her calling him water with flattered grace. They understand each other; they are both warriors for good, though approaching it from different angles. She heals and restores; he solidifies and strengthens. Between the two of them the Blight never had a chance; and they build a new and better Ferelden together, as she always knew they would.)

  
-

  
Oghren goes on to become a hero in the Grey Wardens eclipsed only by his own commander and friend; and he accepts this with a cheerful laugh.

  
( _He picked me up out of a gutter and made me a warrior again_ , he tells his wife later. _I can't be jealous of a man who's done that for me._ )

  
He fights so ferociously in their name, and resists the taint for so long, that he is entered in the Grey Warden annals as legend; and when he finally walks the Deep Roads, he kills two broodmothers before he is ultimately dragged down, and the Stone takes him as a beloved son.

  
(And his last thoughts are of his wife, his wonderful grown children who he loves, and, at the very end, _pride_ in _himself_ \- a feeling he had missed for so very long, that was given back to him by a friend. At the very end of his life, he is finally proud to be Oghren, the way he had not been since Branka left him. He goes to his grave with one last big laugh and none of the darkspawn who hear it go unshaken by his courage.)

  
-

  
When Sten returns home, he will bring a golem with him, and he will bring wisdom from other lands. The last is greater than the first, mighty though Shale is.

  
Sten has always believed that the Qun would bring much to other peoples, but until Ferelden and the Blight, he had never known how much others would bring to the Qun; and it is this knowledge, and the wisdom he learned in Ferelden from a brave warrior of the dwarves, that will see him on a throne.

For there are many who would destroy Shale, fearing her, and he must protect his comrade in arms from his mistaken brethren. And so, with the wisdom of foreign lands, he becomes the greatest player of politics in all the land, that he may defend Shale's right to exist.

And when it comes time to name a new Arishok to replace the one who died in noble battle on Kirkwall's stone, there is only one choice.

  
(He leads his people well, and there is no greater gift in the Qun than that.)

  
-

  
It's silly, but the knowledge that she was once a dwarf, too, that she shared a race with this man who has been so kind to her when he has had no reason to be, is a source of great comfort to Shale, on the long nights when she stays awake and watches them dream. There is something to be said for comfort, after so long without.

  
(And when her best friend becomes Arishok, and she stands as his right hand, it is a memory of kindnesses given and comfort taken that keeps her on the right track.)

  
-

  
Someday, Alistair will forgive him, though he will never quite _like_ him again; but he leads well, and when he is older and gray, he accepts the wisdom shown, and lets go of his hate, surrounded by children that Anora dutifully gave him, and subjects who loved him. And he was good to Anora from that day on, and though she never loved him, she did, to her own surprise, become friends with him; and they passed their days in peace.

  
(And they will remember him as Alistair the Good.)

  
-

  
Zevran is wind and the Warden is stone and it makes brothers out of them. Zevran has never known that he needed a place to stand, and the Warden has never known that he needed someone he could just blow off steam with. The warrior who listens to others finds it good to talk to Zevran, and be heard himself, for once.

And Zevran finds quickly that the greatest winds can only blow when they have an anchor, and are secure. 

(He is a figure of legend in his own time, a Black Fox reborn, a mystery and a gentle ghost. His anchor is his friend, the man who set him free not for money or aid but for friendship's sake. Thus it is that Zevran, who could not finish a single job for cruel overlords of gilded cages, dismantles the Crows like the gale force wind he is for memory of a friend; for now he has stone under his feet, now he has somewhere to touch down before he begins his path of destruction.)

He wanders for many years, but when it is finally time to grow old and die, he returns to Ferelden, and slips into his ending happy and content, and as his will asked, is buried in the little spot in the woods where he first met the Warden.

(That was the moment he will regard as when his life truly began.)

-

Leliana does many things in later years; but it is the little home near Orzammar's front gates, of good stone and good wood and good children, that it is all leading towards, and she lives out her days with him doing little more than farming in peace.

(She knows of Morrigan for he told her that same night, and forgave him that same night too. And on many nights she wonders if her friend is okay in Orlais, and helps her as much as she can, for Leliana is as grand as her husband, has a heart just as big. And she cannot hate the woman who saved her husband's life.)

He is stone and she is diamond; and they are both good, and happy, and at peace.

(And when she dies, they put her in the Stone as she had requested, for she will do naught but strengthen it- a vein of glorious crystal, pure beside her husband, who goes in the same night.)

**Author's Note:**

> Created when I heard that Morrigan is nicer if the Warden was friends with her, and it made me think... wow, we can have such an effect on others, even in real life. And in a more fantastical situation, who's to say we wouldn't all improve even further? Just a short little set of stories about how our lives can be changed because we knew one good person.
> 
> Assumes a heroic Dwarf Noble protagonist- for those curious, he picked Bhelen for king, realizing he would be better even despite his personal betrayal, cleansed the werewolves, saved Redcliffe, and spared the mages. I.E. "super good guy run". Hell he even found time to stab Gaxkang while he was at it. Mostly because it entertains me to pick the "Ruthless" character background and run with a hero version. "Ruthlots", perhaps?


End file.
